Family Reunion, Nancy Thayer [the kiss of deception read online .txt] 📗

that had been used for dresses or curtains. One side of the room was shelves with baskets devoted to knitting, crocheting, and needlepointing. The long table where Eleanor sat held the sewing machine and a wicker basket lined with rose-printed muslin that contained dressmaker’s scissors, pinking shears, a tape measure, and a pair of tiny gold embroidery scissors shaped like a bird with a long thin bill for snipping threads. On the shelf nearest her were a red cloth tomato stuck with straight pins with fat heads and a fabric tomato stuck with safety pins. In the far corner of the room was a dressmaker’s dummy. Years ago, Eleanor had taken pity on the headless, naked dummy and wrapped one of her grandmother’s shawls around it.

Eleanor’s mother’s mother had turned up her nose at store-bought clothes. Winifred had had a dressmaker who helped her create dresses, slips, and nightgowns that fit her measurements precisely. In the black-and-white photographs, Winifred always looked neat, even regal, with her long hair in braids fastened tidily to the back of her head. Eleanor had no idea what her grandmother looked like with her hair down.

Now here Eleanor was in the same room where her grandmother had been painstakingly pinned into a figure-fitting one-of-a-kind dress. Eleanor was making matching tees for her granddaughter’s charges at Beach Camp.

It made Eleanor smile. She lifted the stencil sheet off the first tee. “Hooray!” she cried, for the words looked professionally done, all the letters equally dark, not even the smallest slip of red marring the letters.

Carried away with her success, she carefully made a few more. She wanted to do them all, but her hands got cramped and her neck hurt from bending. She stood up, put her hands on her back, and leaned backward, relishing the pull on her muscles. Time for tea? She glanced at her watch. Yes, she would finish the lot and then it would be time for a drink!

Eleven

Ari pulled into an empty space in the yacht club parking lot. As always, she checked her reflection in the visor mirror—fine. She looked fine. She dotted and swirled sunblock/moisturizer all over her face, especially on her nose. Her only makeup was a light touch of pink Burt’s Bees balm. She’d pulled her hair back into a high ponytail. She wore deck shoes, navy shorts, and a white yacht club tee over her bathing suit, plus a red fleece tied around her shoulders in case she got cold. It was not yet the depth of summer, and the water was cool.

She walked through the parking lot and into the club, greeting old friends and acquaintances. She saw Beck waiting for her at the end of the dock. Board shorts, navy tee, deck shoes, and a red scalloper’s cap with the long bill for sun protection and to keep the sun out of his eyes.

“Hey,” she called, walking toward him. “Nice day for a sail.”

“Hi, Ari.” Beck leaned forward and kissed her cheek as any friend would. “The wind is fickle today. We’ll see what happens.”

They took the club launch out to Beck’s sailboat.

“Here,” Beck said as they got settled. “Wear this.” He handed her a lightweight buoyancy vest. “Hen made me promise to make you wear it,” Beck said.

Ari laughed in surprise. “Hen?”

“She likes you. And she’s surprisingly good at getting her own way.”

“She’s a smart girl,” Ari said, putting on the vest, and she was thinking, with a kind of envy, how close Beck’s family seemed to be. That Hen even knew Ari was sailing with Beck—that Hen even remembered Ari—was surprising.

They cast off from the buoy and sailed across the harbor toward the end of the Jetties and around to the deeper waters of the sound running along the north shore of the island. Beck was an aggressive, playful sailor, letting the sails fill, tacking back and forth, completely concentrating on his boat and the wind. Now and then the boat rose and slapped down hard onto the rocking waves. Ari was glad she didn’t have her grandmother’s problem with motion sickness.

She leaned back on her elbows, lifting her face to the sun. The wind flipped her ponytail, and the boat splashed and the water sprayed, making fans of rainbows. She relaxed against the boat, listening to these sounds so familiar from her childhood as a boat cradled her in the ocean. She stopped thinking as the sun warmed her face and shoulders. She almost dreamed.

The boat slowed, turned, stopped.

Beck said, “Sorry to wake you.”

“I wasn’t asleep.” Ari straightened, taking a deep breath. “But I was more relaxed than I’ve been in months.” She looked around. “Oh, there’s the Great Point lighthouse. We’ve come farther than I thought.”

“Fifth point,” Beck said. “I think this is good, don’t you?” He headed the boat sideways to the land, dropped anchor, and slipped into the water. It hit him at chest level. “Damn! It’s freezing! Hand me the picnic basket. I’ll come back for you.”

“I’m fine.” Ari took off her life vest and dropped her fleece. She slid into the water with her clothes on. She did this often, knowing that in a few minutes the sun would dry them. The water reached up to her mouth, an efficient demonstration that Beck was taller than she was, although she was tall. She quickly pushed her way through the water, which got shallower with each step, to the beach. She could tell by the damp clumps of seaweed high on the sand that the tide was in, so when they were ready to leave, the water would be retreating. Then, probably, only her legs up to her knees would get wet.

Beck lifted a threadbare tartan blanket from the basket and flipped it out. Ari caught the other side and together they brought the blanket down to the sand. Beck anchored it with Tupperware boxes and two bottles of sparkling water.

“Water?” Ari asked, sitting cross-legged on the blanket. “No wine?”

“I don’t